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Cutting the cable cord just got a little more expensive. The price of a YouTube TV subscription is going up by $10 to $49.99 a month.
The Google-owned company announced the price hike in a blog post-Wednesday.
YouTube said it was raising prices to bring customers “the best service possible.” The company said it was adding eight channels owned by cable network Discovery, including the namesake Discovery channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC and Animal Planet.
YouTube also plans to add the OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network later this year. That network is a joint venture of Discovery and Winfrey’s Harpo production company.
The price increase for YouTube’s premium product is the second for YouTube since it launched the TV plan in 2017. Prices started at $34.99 a month and went up to $39.99 in March 2018.
Prices are going up even more for people who get YouTube TV through Apple. That plan will now cost $54.99 a month.
YouTube is not the only bundle service to raise prices, either.
AT&T recently announced plans to raise the price of its DirecTV Now live TV service.
And Hulu just raised the price of its Live TV product by $5 a month to $45. The company, which is a joint venture of Disney, Comcast and AT&T’s WarnerMedia, recently cut prices for its cheapest ad-supported plan, though.
That plan is a streaming service that does not include live TV.
Disney recently acquired the stake in Hulu that had been owned by 21st Century Fox, giving it majority control of the service. There has been speculation that Disney may be looking to buy WarnerMedia’s stake, too.
Providers of these types of live TV bundles have been increasing prices as the services add more channels. YouTube TV’s last price increase, for example, came after it added TNT, CNN, and TBS.
Hulu raised prices a couple of months after Discovery channels were added to the platform.
Some services, like Sling TV, also have attributed the increases to rising programming fees.
It’s not just live TV bundles that are hiking fees. Netflix, which only offers an on-demand, ad-free streaming service, issued a price hike for US subscribers earlier this year.
The hikes come at a time when more consumers are giving up expensive monthly cable or satellite TV services and are watching more TV shows on streaming services.
But the streaming media world is growing increasingly crowded.
In addition to Netflix and Hulu, Amazon has its own streaming service for its Prime members. Apple just announced a big move into streaming as well.
Both Disney and WarnerMedia are planning their own services as, too. Disney is expected to reveal more details about its upcoming Disney+ service at an investor event Thursday.
